#HOWIAMACO
CONSUMER-SOURCED MARKETING CAMPAIGN
#HOWIAMACO began strictly as a social media tag. The tag allowed AMACO to better interact with its consumers and later morphed into a marketing campaign.
The initiative encouraged consumers to share their work and moved the brand towards a more publicly people-focused mission by featuring consumer work in print ads and later on the website as well.
How do we synthesize our internet presence with our print presence?
That was the question our marketing team asked. After nearly a year of watching images flood in under #howiamaco, the answer became obvious - let's show off how talented our consumers are by featuring their work in our ads. Until this point our go-to method of showing off products was to use them in-house, but we realized quickly that we had amassed a hoard of images without lifting a finger and it was time they did more than sit in the Instagram timeline. The #howiamaco campaign allowed us to release strain on our in-house creators, but more importantly thanked our consumers for their support by featuring their work and simultaneously feature our products. The campaign grew the company closer to its consumer base and put a fresh spin on our editorial work.
The ad design was inspired by Instagram, the platform from which the images were being pulled.
I locked the images into a square and rectangular grid format to compliment the original ratios. Flat blocks of color combined with significant and intentional white space allowed room for the pieces to breathe and for viewers to focus on the individual images. It also allowed for instructions to encourage others to post their own images in hopes of creating a snowball effect that would allow us to continue the campaign; it wasn't just about showing existing work, but getting more people to participate in the process. Color schemes were chosen deliberately by first searching through our collection of images then choosing colors from them to make the full image more cohesive.
In my mind, though, the print ads were simple a catalyst for something much bigger.
The American Art Clay, Co. was set to come into it's 100th year in 2019, and for as long as it
had been operational, one thing was clear above everything else: AMACO is all about its people. Life at AMACO was close-knit, but we all knew that our family extended well beyond the walls
of our offices and factory. The company would not be anything without the consumers who supported it, and I happened to know that our recently-redesigned website had an empty blog space that was simply sitting there, open for grabs. So, after a pitch to my manager, I was given control of the blog and took the #howiamaco campaign to the next level of interaction.
If AMACO really wanted to be a company focused on its consumers, we needed to dive deeper than simply sharing pictures of their work; we needed to show we cared about who they were as individuals and not just customers or free advertisers. I wrote up a batch of questions, both professional, personal, and a little silly, and individually contacted every person who had or would be featured in one of our ads to ask if they'd be willing to do a small feature on our blog. I received an overwhelming amount of positive responses in return and so the #howiamaco Insta Feature was born.
The aesthetic for the blog headers (including website banners for the home page of our website) was modeled after the ad design to create consistency across the campaign despite the fact that they were different mediums. The project allowed me to form relationships with our consumers on a personal level and professionally allowed me to incorporate my love for writing with my design as I typed up brief summaries about the artists and their work.
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If you wish to check out some of the amazing ceramic artists I was lucky enough to work with (like the quirky and talented Jarmél Reitz, whose work is featured above), you can check out the blog for yourself by visiting http://www.amaco.com/blog!